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As part of the ongoing effort to build a more secure Internet, led in part by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, MuniNetworks.org is now using TLS to encrypt all of our content. Nothing should change for your experience except you should see a locked padlock or green https in your browser depending on which browser you use.

We believe this is important for multiple reasons, including to prevent unauthorized government snooping, corporate eavesdropping, and any inappropriate injection of content. Please let us know if you have any problems related to this change by email.

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a nonprofit organization in Minneapolis, seeks an intern for September-January. Focus is on providing preliminary research and support to our telecommunications and energy initiatives. Our organization has worked with communities for 40 years to strengthen local economies and retain strong decision-making at the local level.

We anticipate approximately 20 hours per week, with a flexible schedule. This is a paid position. Our office is in the Seward neighborhood in South Minneapolis, close to the U of MN East bank campus. Tasks include, but are not limited to:

Research selected energy and telecommunications topics online and via phone

Research journalists, administrative agencies, elected officials and relevant organizations for targeted outreach

Create, organize, or edit content for our websites including graphics

Update ILSR page on a weekly or bi-weekly basis

Help create email and social media templates for sharing our Energy and Telecommunications reports, graphics, etc.

You will soon start seeing some stories by David Collado, under the byline "dcollado." David has been researching community owned networks with ILSR for the summer and will continue for a few more months. Here is some background biographical details on David.

David Collado is currently a JD candidate (2014) at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. He is also working with ILSR as a research consultant on a project aiming to measure the economic impacts of municipal broadband networks.

David proposed this research project to ILSR after taking a telecommunications law course taught by Susan Crawford in which he wrote a paper titled "Overcoming Obstacles to Municipal Fiber Networks" which focused on debunking the policy rationales behind the many state laws restricting municipal broadband.

Through his school research, David became invested in the cause of municipalities' rights to provide critical infrastructure for their communities. In researching the state laws restricting municipal broadband, he found the type of injustice he went to law school to learn how to fight. David also believes that promoting municipal broadband can solve a host of problems including the digital divide, net neutrality, and monopolization of communications infrastructure, as well as spur entrepreneurship and innovation, his other main interests.

David's research with ILSR focuses primarily on exploring the various cost savings to governments, schools, businesses and residents that result from community owned broadband networks.

We apologize for the last week of glitches and errors you have been having in trying to use our site. Our thoroughly incompetent web hosts have been sacked and we have transitioned to a different hosting provider, which should be much better.

Some glitches are still being worked out, but we hope the site is generally around. For all your hosting needs, whoever you go with, don't make it Westhost.com

Sharp-eyed readers may have noticed a new byline this week starting with the OpenCape post - ILSR welcomes back Becca Vargo Daggett. Becca is doing some research and writing for us that will show up on MuniNetworks.org and in upcoming publications.

Her bio:

Becca joined ILSR to work on American Voice 2004, then stayed on to develop the telecommunications initiative. After a detour into motherhood, eldercare, and financial services (she passed the coursework and exam for the CFP designation), she is delighted to be back and focused on the financial and economic considerations behind municipal broadband efforts.

Without's Becca's work, MuniNetworks.org would not be here. We are lucky to have her back!

In the last few years local communities, governments, non-profit organizations and neighborhood residents from across the U.S. have successfully launched community broadband initiatives. 54 U.S. cities own citywide fiber networks and another 79 own citywide cable networks. These local initiatives, in rural and urban areas alike, have served as community scale infrastructures that are sustainable and allow participation and decisionmaking on the most local level.

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), a small non-profit based in Minneapolis seeks a full-time employee to conduct public policy research in broadband/telecommunications. The position involves research, including conducting telephone interviews, writing, and creating online materials including charts/graphs, web pages, videos, infographics, etc.

Candidates need to be strongly self-directed, have a background in policy and economics, and have excellent communication skills. Candidates should be comfortable with graphic design or web design.

Interested candidates should submit a letter of interest, a resume, and three references with contact information to info@newrules.org. Applications received by January 27 will be given priority.

Salary: $28,000, plus benefits.

The Institute’s mission is to provide innovative strategies, working models and timely information to support environmentally sound and equitable community development. To this end, ILSR works with citizens, activists, policymakers and entrepreneurs to design systems, policies and enterprises that meet local or regional needs; to maximize human, material, natural and financial resources; and to ensure that the benefits of these systems and resources accrue to all local citizens.

The Telecommunications as Commons mission is to encourage broadband networks that are directly accountable to the community they serve. In order to ensure such accountability, we encourage ownership structures such as public ownership, cooperative models, and other nonprofit approaches.

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Incumbent providers, grown lazy on a steady diet of public subsidies and monopoly rents, have done their best to cast this as a debate between efficient private competitors and inefficient government monopolies. But it is the incumbents that would rather regulate than compete. They resist municipal entry not because it is incompetent – no one resists incompetent competitors – or because it is unnecessary. Rather incumbents resist municipal entry because they recognize the ability of local government to offer a genuine competitive alternative to a high priced monopoly or duopoly services.